Sundries & Curiosities for the Adventurous. A Tribal Inquiry.

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this vibrancy we cannot lose

The tower is as wide and spacious as the sky itself. And within this tower, spacious and exquisitely ornamented, there are hundreds of thousands- of towers, each one of which is as exquisitely ornamented as the main tower itself and as spacious as the sky. And all of the towers, beyond calculation in number, stand not at all in one another’s way, each preserves its individual existence in perfect harmony with all the rest- there is a state of perfect intermingling and yet of perfect orderliness. The young pilgrim sees himself in all the towers s well as in each single tower where all is contained in one and each contain all.

~Avatamsaka Sutra

what we see in the reflections of emotion and challenge within each other…..

And no matter what you have to let go of, no matter what you lose- your hearing, your vision, your memory, your mobility- you don’t lose the ability to love. You might even get better at it.

The letting go includes letting go of always wanting to be happy. I was recently complaining to Frieda, a friend who still loves to dance in her 70’s, about the fact that my children and grandchildren live so far away. “I would be so much happier if they lived nearby,” I said.

Her response shocked me. “Happiness is overrated. you can’t always be happy, and that’s ok. That’s life. Just live your life. you’ve been unhappy sometimes in the past. Do you regret those parts of your life? Do you regret the experiences that made you unhappy?”

She’s right. The more I put happiness aside, the more easily I can settle with what is. The more I let go of being happy, the happier I am,. It doesn’t matter how old you are.

When you taste your first cup of tea or coffee in the morning, you are neither old nor young. When you walk in the wetlands with a friend and group of swans take flight, and you hear the amazing clatter of their wings, you are neither old or young. You are alive. When you are making something- red lentil soup, a valentine for your granddaughter- you are neither old nor young.